One of the characteristics of mainstream discourse concerning political, social and economic problems is that it frequently proceeds to examine only the surface phenomena of these issues. Court intellectuals and the mainstream media apply their thoughts to just a single order of logic by concentrating only on what is front of their faces. In part this problem is the same as the one identified by Henry Hazlitt in Economics in One Lesson – that there is a perennial failure to examine both the seen and unseen consequences of a particular act or proposal. However, while Hazlitt focussed his attention on economists and economic policy, we will demonstrate here that such thinking permeates a much wider area of thought. While we will not necessarily draw any specific conclusions, we will raise some challenges to some of society’s most rigidly held beliefs and dogmas on its own terms.

Beginning in Hazlitt’s arena, the first such area we will examine is whenever someone appears on the television or in the newspaper, usually brandishing the statistical results of some “study”, in order to declare that “the government must do more to help X”. X, as it turns out, could be almost anything – the elderly in need of care; rural bus frequencies; lowering cancer deaths; children with dyslexia; conservation of trees – any kind of apparently suboptimal situation which the study and its authors have declared is in dire need of address. The particular situation may, of course, be anything from regrettable to tragic, especially when it involves either poverty, illness or death. Nevertheless the only thing that these studies and pronouncements ever achieve is to point out that we do not live in the Garden of Eden; that we live in a world of scarcity where desires remain unfulfilled and where we have to choose which of those unfulfilled desires and purposes to devote what are, at any single point in time, a finite quantity of wealth and resources. The real question we face is not whether more should be done for problems A, B or C – in an ideal world of infinite wealth we would do everything for A, B, C and every other letter of the alphabet and beyond. Rather, because we have only a limited amount of wealth and resources, our difficulty is in choosing which of problems A, B or C should receive funding at the expense of any other. If you have only one hundred pounds in your pocket and ten people turn up each demanding one hundred pounds in order to resolve all of their various ailments and hardships then it is clear that, should you be kind enough to make a donation, you can only ever satisfy one of them at the expense of the other nine. Implicitly, of course, each of these ten people is suggesting that their particular causes are more deserving than any other. Seldom, however, do all of these studies and statistical reports state explicitly why one end should be funded as opposed to another. This is not to suggest, of course, that the state does not spend an awful lot of money on things which, even from a statist’s point of view, could be regarded as wasteful. Merely that, if we accept the mainstream position that the state can improve society (as opposed to the libertarian position where the state should do nothing whatsoever and, preferably, cease to exist), the fact of a finite quantity of resources at the state’s disposal at any one time is completely ignored.

Peculiarly, however, the fact of a finite quantity of resources is tacitly recognised when considering the overall quantity of resources which should be at the state’s disposal – namely, arguments over the rate of taxation. All “soak the rich” arguments and any calls for the increased taxation of higher earners are all based on the premise that if the wealthy are allowed to keep more of their money then, consequently, there will be less money for the government to spend on healthcare, public transport, and keeping us safe from terrorists. Again, however, by examining only what is obvious in front of their faces, the peddlers of such arguments fail to grasp the dynamic (as opposed to the static) nature of economising action. Yes, it is true that if you raise taxes today then you will, right now, have a greater quantity of money to devote to whatever you think the government should spend it on. In the long run, however, such higher taxes result in a lower rate of investment in capital goods, a lower rate of production of consumer goods, and hence higher prices for those goods. In other words, the increased amount of money taken as tax revenue will be able to buy increasingly less and so the aim will be self-defeating. It would be far better to lower taxes in order to encourage investment and economic progress so that the lower amount of money taken as tax revenue could buy infinitely more than the larger quantity of money could at the higher tax rate. You are not wealthy if you possess a million pounds when the price of a loaf of bread is one million pounds; yet you are exceptionally well off if, for instance, just one thousand pounds could buy you food, shelter clothing and transport for an entire year.

The two areas we just outlined are very concentrated examples of where mainstream thought fails to think laterally – namely in regards to economic and fiscal policy. However, we can observe the same failing with regards to much wider areas of discussion. For example, it is fashionable these days for liberal elites and popular intellectuals – such as Richard Dawkins and A C Grayling – to be atheists and/or critical of organised religion, declaring themselves to be “free thinkers” who are beyond what they regard as the mindless adherence to mere superstition. The two main arguments buttressing their point of view, which are joined at the hip, is that there is a complete lack of evidence for the existence of God, and that organised religion is and has been the cause of so much suffering and oppression in the world – the latter being summed up by the popular phrase “the root of all evil”. Needless to say this evil is made all the more tragic on account of the first argument – that it is all in service of a complete illusion or fantasy. If we accept (which the present author does not) that the lack of evidence for the existence of God is sufficient to invalidate a belief in God, then yes, it would follow that all adherences to a deity and all organised religion is, indeed, ridiculous and the pain and suffering it might cause would be regrettable. However, once again this is only true when one focusses on what is in front of one’s very nose – in other words, the things that we see of religion rather than the things that we do not see from an absence of religion. Is it not the case that, beginning with the French Revolution, the struggle to fill the ideological void left by the decline of religion in the West (in tandem with the increasing faith in human reason and design in the sociological arena) has led to a degree of evil and terror far worse than that which can be blamed on organised religion? If we just look at the pure numbers then the biggest killer in history has been the thoroughly anti-religious communism, and for the survivors of both communism and all such collectivist regimes life was utterly miserable and impoverished. Of course, an absence of religion does not necessarily mean that humans are unable to attain moral enhancement through reason or reflection. However, the ideologies that have served to replace religion – having dislodged God and the will of God as their primary focus – have been shorn of any reference to what is good and what is evil other than the contents of the ideologue’s own mind. Hence, the magnitude of all creation – including every other human being who, devoid of his sanctified state as a child made in God’s image, can be safely relegated to the status of a public slave – simply becomes a means or, even a plaything, for the ideologue to realise his grand vision. In other words, the ideologue elevates himself to the role of God and it is him who now throws the thunderbolts down to Earth. Hence, the costs of pursuing these ideologies, heaped onto everyone else, are either casually disregarded – such as crusades for democracy and “regime change” – or viewed as proud achievements when they exterminate political dissenters (the Great Purges), the racially inferior (the Holocaust), or any trace of a class and culture which represented an outdated and contrarian society (the Cultural Revolution). Indeed, the arrival of secular ideologies has truly given birth to the worst type of criminal zealot – the person who commits evil when he thinks he is pursuing good. Those who perform evil deeds with the full knowledge that they are evil, however much they may revel in what they have done, might at least possess some inkling of guilt or conscience. For the secular fanatic, however, the bodies piled high and the rivers of blood neither move nor shake him – they are unquestionably necessary ends towards a bright and happy future. In some ways, however, the casual disregard for the costs and consequences of a particular crusade can be more pernicious than actively pursuing the celebration of death and destruction. For example, the secular crusade to make the world “safe for democracy” during and after World War I fostered the deeply unstable situation in Central Europe which led to the rise of further secular ideologies such as Fascism and Nazism resulting, of course, in the horror of World War II. A typical liberal intellectual today might tell you that removing Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi were necessary because these men were “dictators”. Yet what he fails to consider, as the architects of interwar Europe failed to consider, is that in their own particular situations the rule of such despots was probably the least bad option, and that their removal has unleashed a whole catalogue of horrors that far exceed those experienced under their aegis. The same attitude is taken towards the Syrian President, Bashar al-Assad. The one line narrative, yet again, is that he is an evil dictator and so should be forcibly removed from power. Yet not only has the attempt to do so resulted in the Western support for and arming of dangerous terrorists and fanatics (the chickens of which are coming home to roost in the form of terrorist atrocities on Western soil), but Assad is supported by Russia and any collision with him risks – as a worst case scenario – war with Russia, which is a nuclear power. Is the removal of this “dictator” really worth risking the incineration of all life on Earth?

If a belief in God and an adherence to an organised religion are based upon superstitions and illusions then it is beyond the scope of this essay to determine whether or not it is, ultimately, a good thing for an individual to live his life and base his moral fervour upon such an illusion. Nevertheless, there is a strong case to be made for the assertion that secular do-gooders, blinded by their own hubris, either deliberately or ignorantly push us onto paths on which we experience far more death, destruction and misery than that caused by any inquisition – and that it may be better to suffer an inquisition based upon an illusion rather than an apocalypse based upon reality.

The final area we will consider, which is equally broad, is the type of state or government that is preferable, should we have to suffer one at all. Although libertarians would prefer for there to be no state or government, they can, of course, distinguish different types of regime as being more or less compatible with liberty. However, this question can also be asked from the point of view of the mainstream – that is, which type of regime is more likely to promote a general peace and prosperity which even the mainstream at least claims to desire? The almost universal answer to this question, by anyone who wishes to be taken seriously, is democracy. Once more, however, this belief is based only upon a very superficial analysis of what is immediately observable. Monarchies are denigrated as being “unfair” because, by pure accident of birth, specific and immovable individuals are blessed with the ability to wield the power of the state while just about everybody else is shut out from such power. Now this is, of course, true enough on the face of it – no human being should be born with any legal rights or privileges that are possessed by no other. Yet by removing such “unfairness” and spreading the ability to access state power to everybody, as we have done in a democracy, we have only served to make things worse. A king, however divinely endowed he might consider himself to be, is still one man, possessing all of the frailties and failings of one man. He personally cannot force all of his subjects to do anything at all; rather, he can only wield his power if he maintains, at the very least, the tacit acceptance of the majority of the population (and very often he need only upset far fewer to lose either his throne or his head – revolutions, rather than being the product of anger and fury among the masses, are, in fact, often triggered by the fact that the monarch failed to keep the upper crust, i.e. the aristocracy, on his side). This fact, therefore, serves to maintain a check on the extent of the power that the king can wield in practice. If he steps too far out of line – by raising taxes too high, by interfering in other people’s lives too much, or by dispensing biased justice – then he will find himself deposed. With democracy, however, all such check on the expansion of state power is eliminated because democracy not only (at least in theory) opens up the corridors of power to every citizen but also serves to offer a veneer of legitimacy for the power that the state wields. In other words, because people believe that they are choosing their leaders or choosing their policies then whatever it is that these leaders do with their power has the backing of the people and “must”, therefore, be legitimate. Needless to say, this if of course, nonsense – theft, for instance, does not suddenly become okay simply because we all band together and the majority choose someone to do all of the stealing from the minority. But the perception that it does has served to increase the growth of the state enormously, turning it into an engine of taxation, welfare and warfare that far eclipses anything achieved by a king or emperor. To take just one instance, a world populated by monarchs never managed to persuade their populations to accept worthless pieces of paper printed out of thin air in exchange for real goods and services – they only ever got as far as coin clipping. Yet a world of democracy achieved this in full by 1971 and it is this that has enabled, more than anything else, the funding of perpetual welfare and warfare, with none of the world’s major conflicts and programmes of socialisation would having been possible without it. The question we are posing here, therefore, is might it not be better to put up with one singular account of unfairness – the hereditary privilege of monarchs – as opposed to the whole, disastrous catalogue of state growth? As with all of the issues we have raised here, we are seeking not to answer this question – merely to raise it in the first place and to demonstrate that what seems to be so blindingly obvious and straightforward in the majority of mainstream discourse might not be so after all.